Church, Capitalism, and Democracy in Post-Ecological Societies: A Chinese Christian Perspective

By Cheng-tian Kuo

Most ecotheologies build their arguments on the Bible's creation-story and resurrection-narrative in the hope to save the ecology through spiritual meditation, reforming capitalism, and/or deliberative democracy. However, based on a Chinese Christian social scientist's perspective, this book argues that few of these ecotheologies are theologically and empirically valid. Instead, it proposes a neuro-institutional post-ecology theology that builds on the major themes of the Last Judgment to refocus ecotheology toward evangelism and to adapt ecotheology to capitalism and democracy in order to embrace the "already but not yet" impacts of the inevitable total destruction of the ecology in the near future.

The vanities in current ecotheologies are divided into religious, economic, and political categories. Among the major ones discussed in this book are the vanities of ecological meditation theology, leftist and rightist economic theologies, as well as ecotheologies of green authoritarianism and deliberative democracy. Even if these ecotheologies work perfectly as they were intended to, global ecological crises have passed the point of no return (i.e., post-ecology) and rendering all of them a global vanity. Based on a Chinese Christian social scientist's perspective, this book proposes a moderate course of ecological spirituality, economic behaviors, and democratic actions, but with a radical devotion to crisis management and evangelism in preparation for the Doomsdays. This book is unique in its balanced interdisciplinary composition, employing theories from cognitive science, Christian theology, economics, and political science.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Oct 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532658198

Cheng-tian Kuo

Cheng-tian Kuo is Distinguished Professor of Religious Politics at the National Chengchi University in Taiwan. He is the author of Religion and Democracy in Taiwan (2008) and the editor of Religion and Nationalism in Chinese Societies (2017).

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Church, Capitalism,and Democracy in Post-Ecological Societies

A Chinese Christian Perspective

Cheng-tian Kuo

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Church, Capitalism, and Democracy in Post-Ecological
Societies

A Chinese Christian Perspective

Copyright ©

2018

Cheng-tian Kuo. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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This book cites English Biblical verses from the New Revised Standard Version,Hebrew and Greek verses from the BibleWorks, and meets the standards of fair use.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Preface

Abbreviations of Scripture

Chapter 1: Introduction: Scientific and Christian Post-Ecology

Convergence of Scientific and Christian Post-Ecology

Lynn White’s Challenge to Christianity

Methodological Assumptions

A Chinese Christian Perspective

Chapter Outlines

Chapter 2: Neuro-Institutional Human

Neuroscientific Human

Neuro-Institutional Human

Rational Human, Posthumanism and Ecology

Summary

Chapter 3: Neurotheological Human

Neurotheological Origin of Human

God Brain in the Bible

Emotional Brain in the Bible

Rational Brain in the Bible

Balanced Brain in the Bible

Summary

Chapter 4: Church and Post-Ecotheology

Re-discovered Chinese Ecotheories

Vanity of Ecotheologies

Biblical Verses of Ecology and Post-Ecology

Church and Post-Ecotheology

Summary

Chapter 5: Capitalism and Post-Ecotheology

Vanity of Rightist and Leftist Ecological Solutions

Vanity of Sustainable Ecotheology

Capitalism and Post-Ecotheology

Summary

Chapter 6: Democracy and Post-Ecotheology

Vanity of Green/Red Authoritarianism

Vanity of Deliberative Democracy

Vanity of Global Ecological Institutions

Vanity of the Kingdom of God on Earth

Democracy and Post-Ecotheology

Summary

Chapter 7: Conclusion: Too Little to Save and Too Many to Save

Appendix 3.1: Neurotheology in the Bible

Appendix 4.1: Ecology and Post-Ecology in the Bible

Bibliography

Preface

Vanity of vanities! All is vanity (Eccl

1

:

2

)

Twenty years ago, when I first started to teach courses related to ecological politics, I used to laugh at my students: According to the scientific evidence available today, there is a 90 percent chance that your generation will actually witness Parousia when you are about to retire; congratulations! With a grin on my face, I would also add: And I will be long gone to heaven by then. Never more will I laugh at my students. Annually revised scientific evidence reveals that the global ecology consistently degenerates faster than previous expectations and that there is a good chance that I myself (and you) will witness Parousia, too.

My adventure to ecotheology is filled with nothing but theological and empirical puzzles like those updated ecological news. I was born and raised in a family of Chinese religions and was converted to Christianity at the age of thirty-seven, when I was teaching international relations and Asian politics at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. Many of the current ecotheologies seem to try to distance themselves from anthropocentric Christianity while embracing nature-centric Chinese religions, such as Zen Buddhism (for its meditation method) and Daoism (for its emphasis on harmony with nature). Was I converted to a wrong religion? This was my theological puzzle. Trained as a political economist at the University of Chicago and turned into a political theologian afterwards, I was also amazed by the considerable distance between current ecotheologies on the one hand and theories and empirical findings in political science, economics, and sociology, on the other. Most of their ecological prescriptions simply cannot work in the real world of cognitive dissonance, bounded rationality, organizational inertia, mass media’s framing effects, competitive economy, bureaucratic turf, democratic deficit, judicial passivism, and anarchic international power politics.¹ Yet, ecotheologies of this genre continue to bombard the global book market without mercy as if these human natures and behaviors do not exist.

Furthermore, while writing this book, I was involved in the negotiation between conservative religious groups and homosexual groups with regard to same-sex marriage bill in Taiwan from 2013 to 2017. Christian groups were leading other religious groups in this Holy War against LGBT groups. To my surprise, these Taiwanese Christian groups copied the same theological and political tactics that American fundamentalist Christians used, without screening for theological accuracy and political adaptability. The consequences were disastrous for Taiwanese Christianity: The Constitutional Court declared civil laws prohibiting same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional, and many churches and Christian charity organizations lost a lot of young believers and God-fearing young people. I figured out later that the problems of theological accuracy and political adaptability might also occur in Western ecotheology when applied to the Chinese context.

The only source of comfort and inspiration in my theological adventure came from the Holy Spirit through the spirits of my beloved wife, son, and daughter. Like most Christians in the world, they were very committed to the noble ideas of ecological protection indeed. However, they were equally committed, in action, to new dresses, shoes, accessories, hair-dos, overseas tourism, and cell phones with ever-expanding selfie functions, memory spaces, and powerful batteries. Whenever I pushed too far my ecological programs at home, they would always roll their eyes at me. Besides, did I have a right to complain about them? Probably not. I managed my academic works on one desktop computer, three laptops, four 64-GB USBs, and a new cell phone retired by my wife and daughter every other year. Oh! Did I mention that our cabinets were full of eco-friendly shopping bags and water bottles (souvenirs from overseas tourism and academic conferences), some of which we have never used? Finally, I gave up on the advice from existing ecotheologies and developed a moderate version of ecotheology, not to save the ecology but to save the serenity of my family life.

I would like to thank the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Taiwan government (NSC 102-2410-H-004-135-MY3) and the Research Center for Chinese Cultural Subjectivity at the National Chengchi University for providing generous funding to this book project. Parts of this book were written while I was the Taiwanese Chair of Chinese Studies, International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) at Leiden University, the Netherlands, in the first half of 2016. The IIAS provided the friendliest academic environment. Credits of excellent logistic works should be directed to my research assistants Kuenlong Hsieh and Li Chen. Leon van Jaarsveldt meticulously proofread the first draft of this book.

As a growing common but awkward practice in academic publishing, especially in light of the abuses of corporation-sponsored ecological studies, I need to declare that I have no financial or personal relationships (except for those mentioned above) which may have inappropriately influenced me in writing this book. However, I must declare also that my financial and personal relationships with the Holy Spirit and my beloved wife have definitely influenced me in writing this book.

1. For introduction to these works, see Nobel Laureate in Economics, Kahneman, Thinking; Huddy et al., Political Psychology.

Abbreviations of Scripture

Hebrew Bible / Old Testament:

New Testament:

1.

Introduction: Scientific and Christian Post-Ecology

Is it too late? For myself the answer is Yes.¹

Convergence of Scientific and Christian Post-Ecology

Every month we are bombarded by updated ominous ecological news like the following: 2016 Climate Trends Continue to Break Records;² Sea Ice Extent Sinks to Record Lows at Both Poles on March 7, 2017;³ Between 1981 and 2003, 24 per cent of global land was degraded;⁴ Due to vast overfishing, nearly 90 percent of global fish stocks are either fully fished or overfished in 2016;⁵ Some 46–58 thousand square miles of forest are lost each year—equivalent to 48 football fields every minute;⁶ From 1996 to 2017, the numbers of threatened vertebrates increase from 3,314 to 8,170, threatened invertebrates increase from 1,891 to 4,553, and threatened plants increase from 5,328 to 11,674;⁷ and superbugs to kill more than cancer by 2050."

⁸

It is not just what breaks the record that catches our eyes, but also the petrifying speed of ecological deterioration that leaves us conjecturing whether we will actually meet ecological doomsday face to face in the next thirty years or so. According to the estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2000, the global population will reach 8.4 to 11.3 billion by 2050, and 7.0 to 15.1 billion by 2100; global temperature change, relative to 1990, will be 0.8 to 2.6 ℃ hotter in 2050, and 1.4 to 5.8 ℃ hotter in 2100; global sea-level rise will be 5 to 32 cm in 2050, and 9 to 88 cm in 2010.⁹ The IPCC is the largest community of ecological scientists. Because of its intergovernmental nature, it tries to publish analytical results that are acceptable to most scientists and the majority of governments which might weigh economic development more highly than ecological concerns. So, their reports are regarded by the global scientific community as most reliable but on the conservative side.

Since the year 2000, when these estimates were conducted, new data seem to hurry away from the lower ends of these estimates. Global warming set to pass 2°C threshold in 2050, seven of the world’s top climate scientists warned in September 2016.¹⁰ Global temperature rise could hit 2°C threshold by 2050, the IPCC updated its reports in September 2016.¹¹ The United Nations reported in 2017 that global population growth is expected to reach 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100.¹² Since 1987, the Earth Overshoot Day has calculated illustrative calendar dates on which human beings’ annual consumption for the year exceeds Earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources that year. In 1987, it was by December 19 that we had already consumed Earth’s annual regeneration capacity. Afterwards, the dates continuously moved earlier. In 2017, it was August 2.¹³ It is not a question of if, but when the ecology will collapse, many ecologists warned decades ago. We are living in the age of post-ecology in the sense that the primary goal of ecological programs is no longer to save the un-savable ecology but to prepare for the continuing and inevitably total collapse of the ecology.

Never before are scientific analyses and projections about ecological collapse so close to the doomsday prophecies of the Bible in terms of their content, scale and immanence. Their contents consist of a variety of natural and human disasters; the scale is global; and the immanency likely falls within this new-born generation.

The scientific analyses and projections are best represented by the book series of Limits to Growth, which have generally been regarded by the ecological community as the most reliable and moderate perspectives on ecological crises. To their political right are those ecologists who simply dismiss ecological crises as crying wolf or hoaxes. Many of their ‘scientific" findings are clandestinely funded by big oil, coal and steel companies.¹⁴ To their political left are those eco-nuts who seemed to cry wolf about ecological crises as if they would occur in the next decade or so. However, as more scientific evidence and hypotheses are updated, the projections of the Limits to Growth are merging with those of the eco-nuts. That is, the collapse of the global ecological environment is likely to occur around 2050, plus or minus 30 years.

The book series of the Limits to Growth (LTG) started in 1972 by the System Dynamics Group of the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1992, they published the revised edition, Beyond the Limits, with newer data and improved computer models, and warned the global community that humanity had already overshot the limits of the earth’s support capacity at that time, as stated by the title of the book. In 2004, they published yet another edition, Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update, to issue the final call to the global community to take comprehensive actions before ecological crises become irreversible (passing the point of no return). Indeed, by the time the final call was issued (2004), the earth had already passed their predicted point of no return (2002), which would have happened even if all their recommended actions were adopted then. In 2012, a related book to the LTG was published, A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years, which recommended the global community to prepare for the inevitable consequences of ecological collapse.¹⁵

The methodology and collection of empirical data of the LTG series were not without challenges, particularly from some scientists, journalists, capitalists, and politicians, who identity with the camp of Climate Skeptics. In the late 1980s and the early1990s, the criticisms were so overwhelming that it was regarded as politically incorrect to even mention the LTG, unless for its criticism. Skeptics picked on minor technical problems of the LTG models and imposed various political conspiracies on LTG authors. However, few, if any, built their criticisms on the actual use of the methodology, empirical data, and computer programs which the LTG authors have provided without charge. It took another decade for the LTG followers to successfully rebut all these criticisms one by one.¹⁶ Today, the LTG models and warnings remain valid in the eyes of most ecotheorists.

By the end of 2017 the only global achievement in ecological cooperation was a non-binding, non-enforceable, non-regressive Paris Climate Accord which aimed to start ecological actions only in 2020, twenty years after the LTG’s predicted point of no return. Even worse, American President Donald Trump reneged on the Accord in June 2017 and replaced it with an aggressive anti-climate development strategy, including re-opening coal mines, de-regulating environmental protection policies, and exploring the Alaskan oil field.

The LTG series of books are based on a constantly-improved computer model which test-runs thousands of hypotheses with regard to a set of most significant variables related to ecological crises, including resources, industrial outputs, services, population, pollution, land and food. The more devastating political variables to ecological crises, such as war, terrorism, and corruption, are intentionally excluded from the model because it will immediately extinguish the last hope of sustainable development in this computer model.¹⁷ The authors constructed nine of the most reasonable scenarios concerning different hypotheses about the above variables and found out that only two scenarios would lead to sustainable development and only IF the global community would immediately adopt all the ecological actions they recommend. The other seven scenarios take only part of their recommendations into consideration and are simply too weak to save the world; all result in ecological collapse around 2050. Among these seven scenarios, Scenario 1 assumes that the global community takes no coordinated policy to prevent ecological crises, as it seems to have been the case exemplified by the Paris Agreement, the result is ecological collapse around 2020.¹⁸ Although the authors specifically avoided making precise predictions about when the ecological collapse would occur, their prediction charts reveal the collapse time around the year 2050 plus or minus 30 years. This book takes this imminent time-frame as the assumption of the arrival of the post-ecology era. It is consistent with the imminent assumption of Parousia in the Bible. However, it does not and dares not set a precise date for Parousia because of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone,¹⁹ and in Christian history we have seen so many false prophesies made only to be broken.

These limits to growth will likely lead to limits to peace around the world. As nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom,²⁰ these wars will speed up the arrival of ecological crises. How should Christians think about themselves and the ecology in post-ecology? What should Christians do in their daily life in post-ecology? Should Christians look for answers in the Bible? Is not Christianity itself to be blamed for ecological crises?

Lynn White’s Challenge to Christianity

Who is to blame for global ecological crises? Positively or negatively, most ecotheologians start their arguments in response to Lynn White’s path-breaking thesis that it is Christianity to blame; in his words, Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt. White traces the origin of Christianity’s responsibility for ecological crises to the Medieval Christian theology about the relationship between humans and the ecology. At that time, Christianity inherited from Judaism not only a concept of time as non-repetitive and linear but also a striking story of creation. God created humans in God’s image. Man named all the animals, thus establishing his dominance over them. Derived from the creation story, it is God’s will that man exploit nature for his proper ends, and thus making Christianity the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen. When modern science emerged in the thirteenth century, scientists began to use this Christian theology to justify their use of science and technology to exploit nature exponentially. From the thirteenth century onward, up to and including Leibnitz and Newton, every major scientist, in effect, explained his motivations in religious terms. Since religion is the source of ecological crises, White suggests that the solution is either to promote Eastern religions, such as Zen Buddhism, which have a similar creation story but without the human domination theology of Christianity, or to ponder the greatest radical in Christian history since Christ: Saint Francis of Assis who proposed the virtue of humility – not merely for the individual but for man as a species and tried to depose man from his monarchy over creation and set up a democracy of all God’s creatures. White calls Francis as a patron saint for ecologists.²¹

There are undoubtedly logical flaws in White’s arguments. For instance, before he addressed the religious origin of ecological crises, he argued that

Science was traditionally aristocratic, speculative, intellectual in intent; technology was lower-class, empirical, action-oriented. The quite sudden fusion of these two, towards the middle of the nineteenth century, is surely related to the slightly prior and contemporary democratic revolutions which, by reducing social barriers, tended to assert a functional unity of brain and hand. Our ecological crisis is the product of an emerging entirely novel, democratic culture. The issue is whether a democratized world can survive its own implications.²²

Instead of blaming the merger of science and technology as well as the merger of science and democracy in the nineteenth century, White shifted the blame to the Christian theology of the thirteenth century. Would Christianity have caused ecological crises today had the two mergers not happened in the nineteenth century? Did the Industrial Revolution of science and technology in the nineteenth century contribute to contemporary ecological crises? Was not there a Christian hostility toward science in the Middle Ages? Did not the anthropocentric Christianity contribute to the expansion of science and technology through promoting capitalism and democracy only in the nineteenth century?

Furthermore, by the beginning of the twenty-first century, Christianity had worked with other religions to become a leading voice telling us to respect the earth, love our nonhuman as well as our human neighbors, and think deeply about our social policies and economic priorities. Religions now offer Earth Day prayers, critical comments on the environmental effects of World Bank loans, cautions about the dangers of genetic engineering, and Sunday School lessons about how Christians should respond to environmentally induced asthma.²³

Finally, if (Protestant and Catholic) Christianity is responsible for ecological problems, is it also responsible for ecological problems in India (mainly Hinduism) and China (mainly atheism)? In terms of their share of global CO2 emissions in 2016, China is ranked number one for its 28.21 percent of global CO2 emissions; the United States is in the second place, 15.99 percent; India is ranked number three, 6.24 percent; the Eastern Orthodox Russia is ranked number four, 4.53 percent; and Japan, a country of Shinto belief, is ranked number five, 3.67 percent. In fact, seven of the top ten countries (China, India, Russia, Japan, Korea, Iran, and Saudi Arabia) having the largest shares of global CO2 emissions are not Christian countries.²⁴ Besides, in terms of population, China (1.4 billion) and India (1.3 billion) have the largest populations in the world, constituting about one-quarter of the world’s population. While India’s population is expected to surpass China’s population in 2020 due to India’s lack of mandatory birth control program, China relaxed her compulsory birth control program from one-child (implemented from 1979 to 2015) to two-child in 2015. Is Christianity, or any religion, truly responsible for ecological problems?

Despite Lynn White’s logical flaws, his analysis inspired the holistic approach most ecologists endorse, i.e., to cope with global ecological crisis requires solutions at economic, political and religious levels to reform both individuals and institutions.

Methodological Assumptions

This book is unique among its counterparts in its balanced interdisciplinary composition, combining theories of cognitive science, Christian theology, economics and political science. It starts with an integration of cognitive science and theology, called neurotheology. As cognitive scientist James B. Ashbrook first coined the term, neurotheology is the study of relationships between the human brain and religious phenomena.²⁵ Many disciplines and sub-disciplines have contributed to this new research subject, such as neuroscience, neuropsychology, cognitive psychology, social psychology, education, sociology, economics, political science, philosophy and theology. Therefore, this book takes an interdisciplinary approach to study spiritual, economic and political solutions to ecological crises.

Regarding theological methodology, I call myself a neo-evangelical social scientist in the sense that I combine different methodologies to uphold the major doctrines of evangelical theology, including the Trinity, the inerrancy of the Bible, and literal interpretation of the Bible. These methodologies include those of exegesis, hermeneutics, literary criticism, natural science, and social sciences.

The adoption of natural science and social sciences methodologies is based on the evangelical assumption that God created nature and natural law. Nature includes both physical materials and human being, and natural law covers both physical materials and human beings. Natural science and social sciences are nothing but the sciences to study nature and natural law which God created. Theology also starts with the assumption that God created nature and natural law. It goes on to elaborate, not so much on nature, but much more on the natural law between God and human being. Therefore, I assume that science and theology are and must always be compatible and harmonious because God cannot contradict Himself. Theologian of evolutionary ethics, Stephen J. Pope, says it well: If one accepts the axiom that, ultimately, truth cannot conflict with truth, then one can argue that the knowledge provided by the natural sciences . . . is consistent with, and can help to shed light on, the truth affirmed in Christian faith.²⁶

However, the history of the relationship between modern science and conservative theology has been one without compatibility and harmony, starting from Nicolaus Copernicus’ teaching of the heretic science of cosmology in the sixteenth century to the current debate about creationism versus evolutionism. The acrimonious conflict between science and theology is derived from either one of two sources, or both: (1) when one discipline insists on the past erroneous arguments, (2) when one discipline makes more claims than its methodology warrants.

Holding science and theology as compatible is not a new idea. As early as in the seventeenth century, when modern science was on the rise, many Puritan scientists of the Royal Society of London promoted science as an ally of true religion.²⁷ Later, when modern psychology made its debut by atheist Sigmund Freud and B F Skinner, the credibility of theology was under another wave of attack.²⁸ But other leading psychologists, like Freud’s collaborator Carl Jung, continued to support the compatibility between psychology and theology.²⁹

Theologian John Haught found God in the post-Big Bang sciences: In order for our universe to become alive and, at least in human beings, conscious of itself, the physical characteristics of this universe had to be remarkably right from the beginning. The mathematical values associated with the physical constants and initial conditions that would allow for the eventual emergence of life and mind billions of years after the Big Bang seem to have been fine-tuned very precisely at the very start. Even the slightest variation in mathematical values, and life and mind could never have appeared.³⁰

Neuroscientist Justin L Barrett finds complementarity between science and theology: ‘science and Theology talk to each other. Science tells Theology what its latest and greatest accomplishments are and then Theology scurries to figure out how to accommodate those findings . . . Theology points out the dependence of Science on certain prescientific assumptions and commitments that are often supplied by Theology, and insists that without Theology to inform discussions concerning values (what we ought and should think or do), the findings of Science are just as likely to be harmful as beneficial."³¹

A Chinese Christian Perspective

The subtitle of this book A Chinese Christian Perspective is adopted for four methodological reasons. First, there are significant similarities in social and political conditions between that of Chinese churches and that of ante-Nicene churches.³² Chinese Christians constitute about 3 percent in mainland China, 4 percent in Taiwan, and 7 percent in Hong Kong; they are the numerical minority religion. They are also the political minorities; the communist China has been ruled by Marxists; Taiwan was ruled by three Christian presidents from 1945 to 2000 and by presidents of traditional Chinese religions afterward; Hong Kong was returned to communist China in 1997 and the Chief Executives have been believers of traditional Chinese religions. By contrast, ante-Nicene churches constituted about 10 percent of the Roman population by the end of the third century.³³ Most the polytheist Roman emperors were hostile to Christians before 314 AD. When the percentages of Christians in most European countries now fall to an average of 40 percent or below, a Chinese Christian perspective may help bring back Western theologians to their common origin – the ante-Nicene churches.

Secondly, these similarities in social and political conditions produce similar political theologies between Chinese churches and ante-Nicene churches. There is a high degree of religious tolerance among the churches and between the churches and non-Christian religions. Their political theologies emphasize religious freedom and separation of the church and state. They have little motivation to build a religious state of Christianity. Instead, they eagerly engage in evangelism in anticipation of the annihilation of this world, followed by the fast arrival of the kingdom of and from heaven. This book argues that any ecotheology should take these ante-Nicene theological assumptions seriously.

Thirdly, some Western ecotheologians, disillusioned with Christianity like Lynne White was, have become attracted to Chinese religions (especially Daoism and Buddhism) as a religious alternative to save the ecology. As a Chinese Christian political theologian who has published several works on religious politics in Chinese societies,³⁴ I would like to say that Chinese religions are no friendlier than Christianity to ecology as they thought, and that the Chinese communist government has produced little long-term tangible ecological record to become their "green